Picturing the impossible

Last weekend I went back to Newhaven for a belated brithday celebration with sons 1&2. On Friday night we went to the Hope down on the quay for a few pints of wonderful, distinctive and froth-free Harveys (it wasn't completely froth-free, being quite lively, but that's ok as it was naturally occurring rather than artificially induced froth). Nothing tastes quite like Harveys; or rather (see Pete Brown's beer blog's latest post), nothing has a flavour quite like Harveys; that sulphurous aroma when you first put your nose in the glass would, I'm sure, put me off if I didn't know how wonderful it tastes. Then on Saturday morning we trekked into Lewes for a bit of charity shopping (nice Monsoon black velvet evening jacket in the Red Cross shop but that was about all), and picked up some more supplies at the Harveys shop. Our birthday meal was a takeaway from The Viceroy (formerly the Last Viceroy, but known to us as Mr Ahmed's since many years ago he was a neighbour). We each chose one main and one side dish and laid them all out as a buffet, along with rice, poppadoms, naans and pickles, and amply demonstrated the fact thatbpeople eat morebif presented with a variety of stuff, by polishing the lot off, which we would never have done if we had each eaten what we had selected.

And then I got my presents! The good thing about your children getting older and richer is that you get better and better birthday presents from them.

Aaron got me a beautiful Victorian cut glass bowl



And Sebastian has got to know an artist and printmaker called Sarah Jones

One of her range of prints is of the Sussex Ouse at Lewes, with the Harveys brewery on the left. This picture is just as it appears on her website so I hope she won't mind me reproducing it rather than just linking to it:



But Baz thoughtnof a terrific refinement. He gave her some photos of Chertsey and she has superimposed Chertsey onto the river, calling the resulting print 'Chertsey visits Lewes' - an impossible journey, but what a fabulous one!



And what an amazing, beautiful and imaginative pair of presents.